InterMountain GE Tier 4 GEVO ET44 Southern Pacific Santa Fe SPSF Heritage, DCC, LokSound, HO Scale

In early 1983 two large Western railroads, Southern Pacific and the Atchison Topeka & Santa Fe sought to combine as a single railroad. Their efforts were unexpectedly met with resistance and inevitably a negative decision from the ICC. In mid 1986 the Santa Fe Southern Pacific Corp. was forced to sell off the Southern Pacific. Not after dozens of locomotives had already been repainted for both ATSF and the SP into the new “Kodachrome” scheme. Modelers and enthusiast sometimes reflect about “What if?” the proposed SPSF merger actually happened. Coming up 40 years, the SPSF has not been forgotten. Adapting real railroad common practices, including an interesting nod to historical heritage railroads, we developed a plausible alternate reality. Assuming the Southern Pacific Santa Fe integrated ET44AC Tier 4 GEVOs to remain compliant to EPA emission targets. An additional opportunity is an SPSF heritage paint scheme, commemorating the historical railroads that made up both merging railroads. Following the practice of numbering the locomotive to an important year, in this alternate timeline, 1986 would be the year SPSF was officially merged. For SPSF #1986 the conductor side long hood represents the Santa Fe predecessor railroads and the engineer side represents the predecessor and subsidiary railroads for the Southern Pacific. The very first experiments of the Kodachrome scheme were with white lettering. Other details such as SP style roman road numbers reflect on a time when SPSF was repainting locomotives in a manner to add either “SP” or “SF” after the merger was approved. Kodachrome was modified over the years leading to the ICC decision. Changes to the color of the letters on the long hood and nose stripes. Officially the font of the road numbers were to match the Santa Fe’s including the size. InterMountain adapted these features to the GE ET44AC. Early SPSF rosters depicted numbering for GE locomotives to begin with the 8000 series. Assuming the SPSF acquired ES44AC GEVOs in large quantities, and populating the higher numbers meant that the new Tier 4 GEVOs would most likely be replacing earlier retired and displaced GEs in the 8500 series.

MODEL FEATURES:

• Fully-assembled and ready-to-run
• DCC-equipped features Lok Pilot DCC decoder installed on a plug-and-play technology with 21-pin connector motherboard
• Scaled from prototype resources including drawings, field measurements, photographs, and more
• Accurately-painted and –printed paint schemes
• Coupler cutbar
• MU hoses
• Trainline hose
• See through cab windows
• Full cab interior
• Walkway tread
• Fine-scale Celcon handrails for scale appearance
• Windshield wipers
• Lift rings
• Wire grab irons
• Detailed fuel tank with fuel fillers, fuel gauges, breather pipes, and retention tanks
• Metal knuckle couplers – Kadee compatible
• Driveline with 5-pole skew wound motor, precision machined flywheels, for trouble free operation
• All-wheel drive with precision gears for smooth and quiet operation
• Wheels with InterMountain RP25 contours operate on all popular brands of track
• Animated spinning roller bearing caps
• Bidirectional LED constant lighting
• Heavy die-cast frame for greater traction and more pulling power